


Still Human

by DeCarabas



Series: Fugitives Together [12]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: M/M, Past Anders/Karl - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-12
Updated: 2015-07-12
Packaged: 2018-04-08 22:19:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4322892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeCarabas/pseuds/DeCarabas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On names and Anders' shifting sense of self over the years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Still Human

The first night on the road, his mother’s pillow smells like home. He wants to hoard that, save it up, but soon it just smells like him. The templars who came for him don’t use his name; they just call him _the mage, the robe,_ always _the,_ like an object, and when he asks them questions about the Circle it’s as if luggage tried to talk.

They camp every night instead of stopping at the inns along the way. At first he thinks this is just one more way of making sure he doesn’t run off in the night, but then they pass through a village where every face turns to stare at him and his armed guard. They watch him warily and whisper to each other once he’s passed.

At the tower they call him _the Ander_ , another _the_ , but this one means something else; this one means he’s not from here, this isn’t his home. He’s never even seen the Anderfels, but he’s surrounded by crying apprentices who, one by one, give in and allow themselves to be soothed, to be shaped by the tower walls that pen them in, molded into whatever the Circle wants them to be, and he clings to that name. _This is not my home._

The apprentices are all given identical robes and soft slippers, muffling the sound of their footsteps while the templars clank their way through the stone halls. He thinks they’d erase every sight and sound of the mages if they could.

After his first escape those soft slippers are worn through, and he’s dragged back with bloody blisters that he bears with pride, a reminder that he’s still human. He’ll be seen. He’ll be heard. He wraps himself in shining gold and in feathers that rustle in his ear every time he moves, making every gesture cut against the calm, quiet, suffocating lives that the tower wraps them in— _that’s not me, **this** is me._

He’s Anders. He makes it his, and he tucks his old name safely away in a corner of his mind along with the scent that his mother’s pillow used to have and the memory of her hands as she embroidered it, although after just a few years he can’t picture her eyes.

That name belonged to a boy who never set foot in a tower.

* * *

His name is Anders. His name is Justice.

His name is _abomination,_ ringing in his ears, and he has a hard time remembering that he should avoid the templars’ blades, doesn’t react when they pierce his skin, doesn’t see the importance of healing his own wounds until after everything’s over and he’s calmed down enough to think straight again, to remember that he’s mortal. He thinks he’s mortal. He hopes he’s mortal. He looks at the bodies around him and he remembers the fury that filled him in that moment, and he wants to say _this isn’t me_ , but he’s given up the ability to lie to himself along with everything else.

He buys himself room and board at a brothel in exchange for providing healing, remembering a pleasant escape spent at the Pearl; but he finds he can’t relax, can’t stop thinking about the injustice of the conditions the workers are living under.

It takes him a while to realize they aren’t watering down the ale, it’s just him that’s not feeling it.

He starts downing the mushroom ale-that’s-not-exactly-ale that they keep for the dwarves, the kind of rot that humans aren’t supposed to be able to drink without making themselves sick—he still can’t get drunk, but he can feel _something_.

And breaking the rules of what’s supposed to be humanly possible wins him a few bets, but when he starts to wonder just how deeply intertwined the mortal and spirit sides of him have become, he tells himself there are some humans who drink this stuff. He’d heard Oghren tell stories about Senior Enchanter Wynne from their travels together during the Blight, a human who could drink him under the table; she’d developed a taste for dwarven ale in Orzammar, to Oghren’s surprise and delight. Anders holds onto that. This doesn’t have to be yet another proof that he’s not quite human.

For most of the people he treats, he’s the first spirit healer they’ve ever met.

In his old lessons on spirit healing, the apprentices would talk about their chances of winning one of the rare posts for live-in healers outside the tower—a life spent waiting on a noble who could afford the Circle’s services. If they were really lucky, perhaps they’d even be shown off at parties like an exotic cat, leashed and declawed, just dangerous enough for a petty thrill.

The people here have made do with herbs their whole lives. It’s all he can do to swallow his rage.

His stay there ends the night he takes a woman back to his room.

He’s never given much thought to the way his power rises up around him when he’s with someone—he doesn’t know what it feels like to those who aren’t mages, doesn’t know if they feel anything at all unless he channels it into lightning tricks, teases of frost and heat; but he remembers feeling Karl’s weight above him and Karl’s power enfolding him, sliding over his tongue, held out to him like an offering saying _this is me_.

And now when that power of the Fade rises up, his skin splits open in the rush of it and blue light bathes the room.

 _Monster_ , she calls him.

* * *

_Monster_ , he calls himself on his bad days; but he’s carved out a space for himself here in Kirkwall, space enough to be this, whatever he is.

He has his clinic, and the people there call him _the healer_ , not _the mage_. They come to him slowly at first, the desperate life or death emergencies with nowhere else to turn; but gradually they're bringing children with skinned knees and not a bit of fear in their eyes. There aren’t enough hours in the day to see them all, and he thinks of the number of healers locked up in the towers, waiting for the Chantry to decide who deserves their time.

He has his work with the underground, and he never stops feeling a rush of relief and gratitude every time another person in Kirkwall recognizes the injustice of the Gallows, every time someone proves willing to help, even with templars punishing anyone caught sheltering a mage. There’s a surprising number of such people—not enough to truly change things, but enough to convince him that the fear of mages doesn’t go as bone-deep as everyone always tried to tell him. The more he sees, the more he’s certain that it’s not fear but ignorance that allows the abuses of the Circles to flourish. If he could just make enough people pay attention, get it all down in writing—

It’s never enough. He tries to convince himself that it will be someday, when he’s found the right words, when he’s reached enough people. But every time he ventures into the Gallows, there are more Tranquil hawking their wares; and yet every day he sits in the relative safety of his clinic, tending skinned knees, allowing the abuses of the Gallows to go on unchecked.

He should be doing more. But the things he imagines are things that would just get him killed, and kill all his plans with him. He buries himself in routine, and he almost never thinks about all the little things he’s traded away, the drinking and the fucking and the shine of gold—and the company of a friend who he understands so much better now, but only because he’s become him.

He works. He writes. And the comforting familiarity of feathers rustling in his ears reminds him that this space he’s carved out for himself may be narrow and confining, but it’s his.

The way Hawke looks at him doesn’t fit into that space.

It’s too easy to respond to his clumsy flirting, to slip back into old habits, old memories, the old role of _Anders_ instead of _Anders-and-Justice_. Too easy to forget what he is.

It only lasts for a moment. And in remembering, he feels less human than ever, aware of the two separate sides of himself in a way that he’d almost stopped seeing, beyond just the anger that gets harder and harder to choke down with every day as he watches the injustices of the Gallows and remains powerless to act.

* * *

_We’ll kill them all, I promise,_ Hawke says when Anders is at his least human, lyrium-laced templar blood on his hands and the crackling energy of the Fade wrapped around him, shining through his skin; and in that moment he’s not sure whether he’s one person or two, but for every part of him, Hawke’s voice is a lifeline.

He hadn’t wanted to involve Hawke in that run to the Gallows at all. Always too many eyes on him, the dog lord who’d made good; where Hawke went, unwelcome attention tended to follow. As helpful as Hawke had been in the past, Anders couldn’t risk the knowledge of the tunnels under the Gallows slipping out.

He’d gone to his contacts with the mage underground first. Yet even with everything he’d done to expose the horrors of the Circle, all his attempts to get it all down in writing, to make people see—when he brought them this one horror that sounded too unbelievable, somehow it all turned into reasons to just stop listening. He’d been pushing himself too hard, he’d been working too many hours of too many days, he was starting to see patterns in things that weren’t really there; to go to extremes would only lose them everything they were fighting for. With this, he was on his own.

He can’t do this on his own anymore.

Miraculously, he doesn't have to.

Afterward he thinks about telling Hawke his real name, a name he hasn’t spoken in years. But although he’s no longer locked up in the Circle, although he's as free as he's ever likely to be, he’s not the boy who’d never set foot in a tower. That name isn’t his.

So he gives Hawke the name _love_ instead. Too tired of holding back to waste time on anything but the simple truth.

And with Hawke’s power enfolding him and Hawke’s teeth against his throat and a flickering blue light dancing through the bedroom, whatever else he is, in these moments he’s still gloriously human.


End file.
